We've got great news to share today; we are announcing that Acquia raised $50 million, the largest round of financing we’ve ever completed.

The round is led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), one of the world's top investors in our space. They have made various great investments in Open Source (MongoDB, Mulesoft, etc.) as well as SaaS companies (SalesForce, Workday, Box, etc.).

With the new funding, we can continue to go after our vision to help many more organizations with their digital platform and digital business transformation. In addition, Acquia is charting new territory in the world of software with a very unique business model, one that is rooted in Open Source and that helps us build a web that supports openness, innovation and freedom.

We have such a big and exciting opportunity ahead of us. This vision will not come to life on its own and the proprietary competitors are not resting on their laurels. We'll use the funding to double down on all aspects of our company; from increasing our investment in products to deeper investments in sales and marketing.

This is a rare opportunity for the community to communicate directly with the trailblazers who are shaping Drupal 8 into the best release of Drupal yet. Help us make the most of of it -- submit your questions now!

I've long been convinced that every well-run Drupal agency of 30 people or more can afford to hire a Drupal core contributor and let him/her work on Drupal core pretty much full-time. A healthy Drupal agency with 30 people should be able to do $5MM in revenue at a 15% net profit margin #1. This means they have $750k in profits that can be invested in growth, saved as reserves, or distributed among the owners.

There are many ways you can invest in growth. I'm here to argue that hiring a Drupal core contributor can be a great investment, that many Drupal agencies can afford it, and that employing a Drupal core contributor shouldn't just be looked at as a cost.

In fact, Chapter Three just announced that they hired Alex Pott, a Drupal 8 core maintainer, to work full-time on Drupal core. I couldn't be more thrilled. Great for Alex, great for Drupal, and great for Chapter Three! And a good reason to actually write down some of my thoughts.

The value of having a Drupal core contributor on staff

When Drupal 8 launches it will bring with it many big changes. Having someone within your company with first-hand knowledge of these changes is invaluable on a number of fronts. He or she can help train or support your technical staff on the changes coming down the pipe, can help your sales team answer customer questions, and can help your marketing team with blog posts and presentations to establish you as a thought-leader on Drupal. I believe these things take less than 20% of a Drupal core contributor's time, which leaves more than 80% of time to contribute to Drupal.

But perhaps most importantly, it is a crucial contribution that helps ensure the future of the Drupal project itself and help us all avoid falling into the tragedy of the commons. While some core contributors have some amount of funding — ranging from 10% time from their employers to full-time employment (for example, most of Acquia's Office of the CTO are full-time core contributors) — most core contribution happens thanks to great personal sacrifice of the individuals involved. As the complexity and adoption of Drupal grows, there is a growing need for full-time Drupal contributors. Additionally, distributing employment of core contributors across multiple Drupal organizations can be healthy for Drupal; it ensures institutional independence, diversified innovation and resilience.

Measuring the impact of a Drupal core contributor on your business

While that sounds nice, the proof is in the numbers. So when I heard about Chapter Three hiring Alex Pott, I immediately called Chapter Three to congratulate them, but I also asked them to track Alex's impact on Chapter Three in terms of sales. If we can actually prove that hiring a Drupal core contributor is a great business investment, it could provide a really important breakthrough in making Drupal core development scalable.

I asked my team at Acquia to start tracking the impact of the Drupal core contributors on sales. Below, I'll share some data of how Acquia tracked this and why I'm bullish on there being a business case.

For Acquia, high quality content is the number one way to generate new sales leads. Marketers know that the key to doing online business is to become publishers. It is something that Acquia's Drupal developers all help with; developers putting out great content can turn your website into a magnet. And with the help of a well-oiled sales and marketing organization, you can turn visitors into customers.

Back in December, Angie "webchick" Byron did a Drupal 8 preview webinar for Acquia. The webinar attracted over 1,000+ attendees. We were able to track that this single piece of content generated $4.5MM in influenced pipeline #2, of which we've managed to close $1.5MM in business so far.

Even more impressive, Kevin O'Leary has done four webinars on Drupal's newest authoring experience improvements. In total, Kevin's webinars helped generate $9MM in influenced pipeline of which almost $4MM closed. And importantly, Kevin had not worked on Drupal prior to joining Acquia! It goes to show that you don't necessarily have to hire from the community; existing employees can be made core contributors and add value to the company.

Gábor Hojtsy regularly spends some of his time on sales calls and helped close several $500k+ deals. Moshe Weitzman occasionally travels to customers and helped renew several large deals. Moshe also wrote a blog post around Drupal 8's improved upgrade process using Migrate module. We aren't able to track all the details yet (working on it), but I'm sure some of the more than 3,200 unique viewers translated in to sales for us.

Conclusion: investment returned, and then some

Obviously, your results may vary. Acquia has an amazing sales and marketing engine behind these core contributor, driving the results. I hope Chapter Three tracks the impact of hiring Alex Pott and that they share the results publicly so we can continue to build the business case for employing full-time Drupal contributors. If we can show that is not just good for Drupal, but also good for business, we can scale Drupal development to new highs. I hope more Drupal companies will start to think this way.

Footnotes

#1 I assumed that of the 30 people, 25 are billable and 5 are non-billable. I also assumed an average fully-loaded cost per employee of $125k per head and gross revenue per head of around $180k. The basic math works out as follows: (25 employees x $180k) - (30 employees x $125k) = $750k in profit.

There are 365 days per year and about 104 weekend days. This means there are 260 business days. If you subtract 10 legal bank holidays you have 250 days remaining. If you subtract another 15 business days for vacations, conferences, medical leave and others, you have 230 business days left. With a blended hourly rate of $130 per hour and 75% utilization, you arrive at ~$180k gross revenue per billable head.

I confirmed these numbers with several Drupal companies in the US. Best in class digital agencies actually do better; they assume there are 2,000 billable hours in a year per head and maintain at least a 85% chargeability rate (i.e. 1,700 billable hours per head). Many companies do less because the maturity of their business, the market they are in, their geographic location, their ambitions, etc. It's not about what is "good" or "bad", but about what is possible.

#2 "Influenced pipeline" means that the content in question was one factor or touch point in what ultimately lead potential customers to become qualified sales leads and contacted by Acquia. On average, Acquia has 6 touch points for every qualified sales lead.

In a world where innovation is only accelerating, shackling employees with non-competes doesn't make sense anymore. At Acquia, we believe that innovation is about openness and collaboration, and that working together is based on trust and loyalty, something that was born out of our Open Source background. It's been a long time coming but we decided to kill our non-competes. It is the right thing to do. Here is what we just sent to all Acquia employees:

From: Tom Erickson <tom@acquia.com>
To: Everybody at Acquia
Date: Friday, May 2, 2014
Acquians,
We have an amazing team, it's the thing I am personally proudest about.
When asked by others what's the best thing about our company, I don't
hesitate to answer "our team".
There are many things to value in each of you, from your commitment,
your integrity and certainly your passion!
The goal that Dries and I have always set was to have a company where
everyone is challenged, has the opportunity to grow and has some fun
along the way. Most of the time we're successful at that as a company,
though sometimes we fail. Yet even when we fail, we want everyone to
continue to do the right thing and sustain mutual respect.
To this end, the exec team has decided to eliminate non-competes from
our employment agreements. We believe its the right thing for our
team members, for the company and for the industry. There are many
reasons why companies have used non-competes in the past, but we
believe that times have changed and individuals today value the
companies who value them. This may seem contradictory .. "value me,
but let me go to a competitor" .. but we believe that a company who
respects our team members in this way will actually be a better magnet
for talent.
While we are getting rid of non-competes, we are not eliminating other
terms, notably the non-disclosure. So while we do not want to restrict
free movement of talent, it's important that company confidential
information remains just that, confidential.
We do not plan to change existing employment agreements, as that would
be an administrative burden, and we have many other issues to deal with.
This email should suffice as an assurance that existing non competes
below the executive leadership level will not be enforced.
All new hires, with certain exceptions at the executive level, will not
have non-competes.
Viva Acquia!
Tom

Background in business is a 'nice to have', not a 'must have' for an aspiring entrepreneur. I had no solid business background when I founded Mollom or Acquia (I launched them roughly at the same time).

Other than the standard things (an idea, passion and the willingness to act), the most important thing that aspiring entrepreneurs need is the understanding that 80% of entrepreneurship is sales and marketing. If as a founder, you're not obsessed with sales and marketing, you're a liability rather than an asset.

You don't have to be the best sales and marketing guy (I am far from that), but you better enjoy getting other people excited about your project, company or product. It will help you not only with finding customers, but also with recruiting a world-class team, raising venture capital, and more. So if there is one thing you should learn before starting a company, it is "sales and marketing" (in the broad sense) — and you better be passionate about it, because you'll invest years of your life to selling and evangelizing to make your company a success. Without customers or a team, you won't need any other skills, because you'll be out of business.

You need to be talking about your idea all the time. Too many entrepreneurs believe that if they build a killer product, customers will come. It almost never works like that. Smart entrepreneurs do it backwards; they find customers first and build their product only when they have customers ready to start paying. Not testing the market by selling from day one can lead to months, if not years, of wasted time and money. So stop being so secretive about your idea. You will never find your product-market fit by keeping your idea secret until it is perfect. If you're afraid of people telling you that your idea is stupid, chances are you may not be ready to be an entrepreneur.